Pellerin History of Astronomy

Meteor Showers

2019 BCE

A Meteor Shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate from one point in the night sky called a Radiant. Meteor's are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth's atmosphere at extremely high speeds, The moonlight conditions continue to change year after year.

Cassini Orbiter

1997 BCE

The Cassini Orbiter was one of the most ambitious missions ever launched into space, the spacecraft was capable of taking accurate measurements and detailed images in a variety of atmospheric conditions and the light spectra. The Cassini Orbiter had better senses than our own, for example the orbiter could ¨see¨ in wavelengths of light energy that the human eye alone cannot see. The orbiter could also feel things about the magnetic field and any type of particle dust that no human could detect.

Mars Pathfinder Expedition

1996 BCE

Mars Pathfinder Expedition began on December 4, 1996, the arrival time Delta II (Pathfinder) on Mars came in on July 4 1997. Delta II was designed as a technology demonstration of a new way to deliver an instrumented lander and the first ever robotic rover to the surface of the red planet. The Pathfinder´s Scientific findings found Early morning ice clouds, dust devils, Abrupt temperature fluctuations were recorded early in the morning.

The First Space Shuttle Flight

1981 BCE

Columbia was the first shuttle to reach space, in 1981. Columbia carried dozens of astronauts into space during the next two decades, reaching several milestones.

The Apollo Program

1972 BCE

The Apollo program was designed to land humans on the Moon and bring them safely back to Earth. Six of the missions (Apollos 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17) achieved this goal. Apollo 13 did not land on the Moon due to a malfunction, but also returned photographs. The six missions that landed on the Moon returned a wealth of scientific data and almost 400 kilograms of lunar samples. Apollo 13 did not land on the Moon due to a malfunction, but also returned photographs.

Neil Armstrong

1969 BCE

Neil Armstrong was a U.S. astronaut, the first person to set foot on the Moon. on July 20, 1969, Armstrong stepped from the Eagle onto the Moon’s dusty surface with the words, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” Armstrong and Aldrin left the module for more than two hours and deployed scientific instruments, collected surface samples, and took numerous photographs. They were hailed for their part in the opening of a new era in human exploration of the universe.

Ejnar Hertzsprug

1967 BCE

Danish astronomer who classified types of stars by relating their color to their absolute brightness an accomplishment of fundamental importance to modern astronomy. He showed that a relationship exists between the colors of the stars and their true brightness and that giant and dwarf stars must exist. The correlation of color with true brightness became the basis of a widely used method of deducing the so called spectroscopic parallaxes of stars.

John Glenn

1962 BCE

He made the first transcontinental flight with an average supersonic speed in 1957 when he flew from California to New York in 3 hours and 23 minutes. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1959. Glenn was selected for the first orbital flight, Mercury-Atlas 6, and on February 20, 1962, his space capsule Friendship 7, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Its orbit ranged from approximately 161 to 261 km in altitude. Glenn made three orbits, landing nearly 5 hours after launch.

Yuri Gagarin

1961 BCE

1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (left, on the way to the launch pad) became the first human in space, making a 108-minute orbital flight in his Vostok 1 spacecraft. The Space Shuttle began visiting the Russian Mir space station in 1994, and in 1995 Norm Thagard became the first U.S. astronaut to take up residency on Mir. Seven U.S. astronauts served with their Russian counterparts aboard the orbiting Mir laboratory from 1995 to 1998.

Sputnik

1957 BCE

Sputnik's launch stunned the world and changed it, too. It heralded in dramatic fashion a new "space age," created an identity crisis in the United States, that led to the creation of NASA. Sputnik's launch forced Americans to rethink the notion that they were the world's most technologically advanced nation. "Sputnik made everybody think about science and technology more seriously." The satellite was a technological marvel that inspired a generation of students an not just aspiring engineers.

Albert Einstein

1955 BCE

Albert Einstein was a German-born physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity. Einstein’s 1905 paper on the matter/energy relationship proposed the equation E=MC2: energy of a body (E) is equal to the mass (M) of that body times the speed of light squared (C2). This equation suggested that tiny particles of matter could be converted into huge amounts of energy, a discovery that heralded atomic power.

Edwin Hubble

1953 BCE

Edwin Hubble was an American astronomer who, in 1925, was the first to demonstrate the existence of other galaxies besides the Milky Way. Later, in 1929, he also demonstrated that the universe was expanding, (considered by many as one of the most important cosmological discoveries ever made), and formulated what is now known as Hubble's Law to show that the other galaxies are moving away from the Milky Way at a speed directly proportionate to their distance from it.

Karl Jansky

1950 BCE

American engineer whose discovery of radio waves from an extraterrestrial source inaugurated the development of radio astronomy, a new science that from the mid-20th century greatly extended the range of astronomical observations.he discovered in 1931 that the source of the unidentified radio interference came from the stars. By the following spring he concluded that the source lay in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius.

Percival Lowell

1916 BCE

American astronomer who predicted the existence of a planet beyond the orbit of Neptune and initiated the search that ended in the discovery of Pluto. Lowell championed the now-abandoned theory that intelligent inhabitants of a dying Mars constructed a planet-wide system of irrigation, utilizing water from the polar ice caps, which melt annually. He thought the canals were bands of cultivated vegetation dependent on this irrigation. Among his many books on this subject is Mars and Its Canals.

William Herschel

1822 BCE

William Herschel was a German-born British astronomer, the founder of sidereal astronomy for the systematic observation of the heavens. He discovered the planet Uranus, hypothesized that nebulae are composed of stars, and developed a theory of stellar evolution. He sought to determine its shape on the basis of two assumptions: (1) that with his telescope he could see all the stars in our system, and (2) that within the system the stars are regularly spread out.

Sir Isaac Newton

1724 BCE

Isaac Newton was the original discoverer of the infinitesimal calculus. In mechanics, his three laws of motion, the basic principles of modern physics, resulted in the formulation of the law of universal gravitation. In mathematics, he was the original discoverer of the infinitesimal calculus. In optics, his discovery of the composition of white light integrated the phenomena of colors into the science of light and laid the foundation for modern physical optics.

Giovanni Cassini

1712 BCE

Giovanni Cassini discovered four of Saturn’s moons, he was also the first to record observations of the zodiacal light. He was the first to observe the shadows of Jupiter’s satellites as they passed between that planet and the Sun. His observations of spots on the surface of the planet allowed him to measure Jupiter's rotational period. In 1683 Cassini began the measurement of the arc of the meridian (longitude line) through Paris. From these results he concluded that the Earth is somewhat flat.

Difference between Refracting and reflecting telescopes

1700 BCE

A reflecting telescope uses two mirrors instead of using two lenses, Isaac Newton created this telescope to combat chromatic aberration which is a rainbow commonly seen in the refracting telescope. Refracting telescope focus's the light and makes objects that are further away appear brighter, and magnified. The Refracting telescope uses two main lenses, one lens is the Large lens that's called the objective lens, and the smaller lens is used for viewing is called the eyepiece lens.

Galileo

1642 BCE

Galileo was an Italian philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician who made contributions to the sciences of motion, astronomy, and strength of materials and to the development of the scientific method. His formulation of (circular) inertia, the law of falling bodies, and parabolic trajectories marked the beginning of a fundamental change in the study of motion. His discoveries with the telescope revolutionized astronomy and paved the way for the acceptance of the Copernican heliocentric system.

Johannes Kelper

1630 BCE

Johannes Kelper was a German Astronomer who discovered three major laws of planetary motion. (1) The planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus; (2) the time necessary to traverse any arc of a planetary orbit is proportional to the area of the sector between the central body and that arc (the “area law”); and (3) there is an exact relationship between the squares of the planets’ periodic times and the cubes of the radii of their orbits (the “harmonic law”)

Hans Lippershey

1619 BCE

Hans Lippershey was traditionally credited with inventing the telescope (1608). Hans applied to the States General of the Netherlands for a 30-year patent for his instrument, which he called a kijker (looker) in exchange for which he offered not to sell telescopes to foreign kings. States General granted Hans 900 florins for the instrument but required its modification into a binocular device. His telescopes were available to Henry IV of France and others before the end of 1608.

Tycho Brahe

1601 BCE

Tycho Brahe worked in developing astronomical instruments and in measuring and fixing the positions of stars paved the way for future discoveries.His observations the most accurate possible before the invention of the telescope included a comprehensive study of the solar system. Tycho was an artist as well as a scientist and craftsman, and everything he undertook or surrounded himself with. He established a printing shop to produce and bind his manuscripts in his own way.

Nicolaus Copernicus

1543 BCE

Nicolaus Copernicus proposed that the planets have the sun as the fixed point to which their motions are to be referred. Sun also turns once daily on its own axis; and that very slow, long-term changes in the direction of this axis account for the precession of the equinoxes. This representation of the heavens is usually called the heliocentric, or “Sun-centred,” system from the Greek helios, meaning “Sun."

Aristotle

322 BCE

Aristotle was a Greek Philosopher who mad lasting contributions to nearly every aspect of human Knowledge. Aristotle's surviving writings were incredibly influential and useful, out of Aristotle's 200 writings only 31 writings survived. Aristotle studied poetics, Nicomachean Ethics and Eudemian Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, Prior Analytics, Works on Science, Works on Psychology, Philosophy, and Biology. Among all of his studying time in 338, Aristotle also tutored Alexander The Great.

Ptolemy

168 BCE

Around 150 AD, Ptolemy's Almagest and Planetary Hypotheses, starts by assuming that the Earth is stationary and the centre of the universe. Ptolemy's model (The Ptolemaic system) Explained this "Imperfection" by saying that the irregular movements were a a combination of several regular circular of motions, seen from stationary Earth.The first principle of the Ptolemy system was eccentric motion, a body traveling at uniform speed on a circular path, will Sweep out equal angles in equal time.